“You want me to change my name?” That was only slightly less intrusive than asking her to polish up her vagina.
Katrina gave a minimal shake of her head. “Not change it. Just tweak it. We could make a story of that, too. Showing how women of gray divorce are reclaiming their identities.”
“Gray . . . gray divorce?”
“Yeah, you’re part of the latest trend. People in their fifties getting divorced and starting their third act, so to speak. It’s the retired empty nesters who still have maybe twenty years to go before they’re too old to have any fun. They want to go out and enjoy the time they have left instead of spending it in a stale marriage. Like what you did. Another trend is older people moving in with friends rather than going to live in retirement communities. You’re not thinking about that yet, are you?”
“Jesus, Katrina. I’m forty-two. Not seventy-two.” Carli was starting to sweat, but heaven knew if she fanned herself, Katrina would want to pitch it as a segment about hot flashes. She wasn’t having a hot flash. She wasn’t in menopause or even perimenopause, and she wasn’t ready to retire or move into an old folks’ home, either. And she didn’t want to change her name! She’d been Carli Lancaster for almost as long as she’d been Carli Holmes, and her married name was the one she shared with her kids.
“Jessica, where do you stand on all this?” Carli asked, her tone all but demanding. Every muscle in her body was tense. “And are you guys asking Troy to do this kind of stuff, too? Are we filming him getting a prostate exam or trying out a sample of Viagra?”
“Katrina, can you give us a minute, please?” Jessica said in her typical unflappable way.
“But I have a bunch of slides to show you. Some potential Instagram photos and some fun Snapchat ideas,” Katrina said.
“Give us a minute,” Jessica replied, calmly but firmly, and once again at an office meeting, Carli felt the urge to cry. No, not cry. Yell. Yelling would be infinitely more satisfying. Her frustration was about to bubble over. She was not some guinea pig for them to experiment with. She was not going to show off her belly or point out her crow’s-feet on television. She gripped the arms of the chair, preparing for battle. So what if Jessica still intimidated the hell out of her? She wasn’t going to let them humiliate her for the sake of ratings.
After Katrina left the conference room, Jessica sighed and gave Carli the first genuine smile she’d ever seen from the news director. “Oh my goodness, that girl is rough around the edges, isn’t she? I’ll talk to her about that later, but first I wanted to explain to you what our goals are.”
“Do they have anything to do with my vagina?” she shot back.
Jessica actually laughed out loud, and Carli felt a seismic shift in the universe at the sound.
“No, they do not. What Katrina was trying so inexpertly to say is that our viewers like you, and we want to capitalize on that. Not by making you do anything you don’t want to do, but by building up a fan base of loyal followers who relate to you and who trust your word who might be influenced to buy products or visit businesses simply because you’ve recommended them. It’s our way of increasing advertising revenue. That’s really what all this is about.”
“That’s not what that sounded like. It sounds like you want me to be a science experiment for the sake of ratings.” She wasn’t opposed to some of the stuff—the facials and such—but she wasn’t interested in having needles poked into her face or ending up looking like a human Barbie doll.
“No, that’s not what we want at all, and I will very much have a conversation with Katrina about her presentation skills. Sometimes her enthusiasm blinds her judgment, and she’s definitely better online than she is in person. Anyway, we plan to build up the social media presence of all the Channel 7 on-air talent, but we’re finding that your demographic tends to be the ones who follow the most closely. Troy and Allie already have a following, but since you’re new, now is the time to start developing that. How does that sound?”
“It sounds a hell of a lot better than a vampire facial.”
Chapter 21
“Are you sure you don’t mind if I use some of this stuff?” Ben asked as Carli brought out yet another plastic bin full of Halloween decorations. The pile of bright orange storage tubs in her front yard was embarrassingly large, but now that they were all out of her garage, she was determined to unload it all and only put back the stuff she actually liked. As in most things, she and Steve had very different tastes when it came to holiday decorations. She liked themes, while he was more about volume.
“Not at all,” Carli answered. “You’d be doing me a favor by taking some. As you can see, I’ve got way more than I need. My kids are supposed to be out here to help us. I’ll have them take a look and tell me if there’s anything they’re particularly attached to, but my guess is that they won’t care much about any of it.”
Carli pulled her phone from her pocket to text them, even though they were right inside the house. It was the most efficient means of communication and typically resulted in less sassy backtalk, because they were too lazy to text their snarky responses.
You’re supposed to be outside helping me put up the Halloween decorations.
Three dots instantly appeared, and then Mia’s response filled her screen.
Are we seriously putting up decorations? You know we’re in high school, right?
Carli responded.
I’m not doing it for you, darling daughter. I’m doing it for the little kids in the neighborhood. Butts outside. Now.
And then she couldn’t resist adding,
Once we’re done, I will take you out for sushi.
It was cool outside, with the October sun playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. A perfect autumn day. Carli was wearing a Glenville High School sweatshirt that she’d swiped from Mia, while Ben seemed to be fine in just a long-sleeved T-shirt. She was glad he wasn’t wearing a jacket, because it gave her the chance to appreciate his shoulders. Just because he’d gone on a date recently didn’t mean she had to stop ogling him. Not as long as she was discreet about it.
“I should get my kids out here helping, too,” Ben said as he pulled out his own phone and tapped against the screen. Addie appeared almost immediately, while a few minutes later, an unenthusiastic Ethan appeared in plaid flannel pajama bottoms and an oversize MSU hoodie. With the hood up, and his hair sticking out around the edges, he looked like a raggedy lion, and when an enormous yawn nearly split his face, Carli couldn’t hold back a chuckle at his silent roar. They put him to work dumping out all the bins so she could start sorting the piles into similar items.
“Why do we have so much stuff?” Mia grumbled as she made her appearance shortly after Ethan. They nodded at each other and mumbled some indifferent grumpy-teen greetings. Tess arrived a full ten minutes after that, her mascara and lip gloss confirming to Carli that her daughter had spotted Ethan before heading outside. The two of them had spoken only a handful of times, mostly just saying hi from their respective driveways, but Tess hadn’t given up hope that one of these days, Ethan would really notice her.
“Oh hey, Ethan,” she said in that Oh, do you live right next door to me? I had no idea voice that was only clever enough to fool him, but no one else. Ben cast a glance at Carli, and she smiled back.
With six of them working, the decorations were quickly sorted into categories of keep, toss, and donate, and Ben got to choose his stuff from the latter two piles.
“Are we actually putting this stuff up, like, outside our house? Where people can see it?” Ethan said and then yawned again.
“That’s exactly what I said,” Mia added, looking pointedly at Carli.
“Yep, that’s the idea,” Ben answered Ethan with a shrug. “Honestly, I don’t really get it, either, but it’s pretty much mandated by the neighborhood association, so suck it up, buttercup.”
“I like it,” Addie said. “I think it’s fun.”
“That’s because you’re fourteen,” Ethan chided, causi
ng her to blush.
“When you take the hayride around the neighborhood and see everybody else’s decorations, you’ll realize that all the cool houses have them,” Carli said, although these teens did not seem convinced. She had no street cred with them, if that was even a thing anymore.
“What hayride is that?” Ethan asked.
“The Saturday afternoon before Halloween,” Ben answered.
“That’s my birthday,” Ethan said. “I’m turning eighteen.” His chest puffed up, as the comment was clearly meant to impress.
“I can’t wait to turn eighteen,” Tess responded, smiling at him. All day she’d tried to be closest to him, and although he’d been nice enough, he wasn’t quite noticing her, and that gave Carli a little ache.
“Turning eighteen is a little anticlimactic, to be honest,” Mia said. “Although now I can go get a tattoo without asking.”
“Um, no, you can’t,” Carli said.
“Well, I won’t, but I could. Legally, anyway.”
“Maybe I should get a tattoo,” Ethan said, smiling at Ben. “What do you think, Dad? Maybe a nice sleeve that covers my whole arm? Something with lots of skulls?”
“Not a chance.”
“Okay, how about a party, then? I was thinking maybe I could have a bonfire in the backyard. Just have a few friends over to chill and whatever?”
Ben paused for a moment, a black plastic raven in his hands. “Sure, I guess that would be okay. The firepit is all set up, so you can use that. But I’ll be here all night making sure you don’t have too much or the wrong kind of fun.” Ben pointed at his own eyes, and then at Ethan’s in an I’ll be watching you fashion.
Ethan nodded, the picture of chill. “Awesome. Thanks, Dad. I’ll keep it small. Just like a couple hundred kids or so.”
“Or maybe like twenty?” Ben said.
Ethan smiled. “Okay, thirty. Thirty should be good.”
Carli stole a glance at Tess, who was all but crackling with eagerness to be invited. But Ethan was a boy and not the type to notice something like that, either. It was two hours later, after all the decorations were hung, propped, wired, or otherwise displayed in either Carli’s yard or Ben’s that Ethan finally thought to mention it to her daughters.
“So I don’t know exactly what that hayride thing is, but if you guys want to come over here afterward for my party, that would be cool,” he said, and Carli wondered if maybe he’d just been too shy to ask them earlier. This Ethan didn’t seem to be nearly the player that her girls had painted him to be. And other than that one comment about Addie being just fourteen, he was pretty nice to his little sister. Of course, nice, friendly, polite-to-the-neighbor-mom boys could get a girl into every bit as much trouble as the wild ones could. Maybe even more.
As Ethan posed the invitation, Mia stared at him as if he were a perplexing and unsolvable math problem, but Tess was smooth under the pressure.
“That could be cool,” she said, twisting a strand of her hair. “I might be hanging out with some friends that night, but we don’t have anything solid planned yet.”
“Are they cool friends?” he asked.
“Pretty cool.” She nodded.
“You could bring them, I guess. Hey, aren’t you friends with Becca Sturgis? She can come if she wants to.”
And just like that, Carli saw the bubble of hope bursting all around Tess and knew her daughter’s heart was doing the same. It was never a good sign when the boy you were crushing on asked you to bring another girl to his party. Kind of like how Carli felt when realizing that the attractive man from next door had entertained a sleepover date.
“All right. I hate to admit this, but the decorations are kind of . . . entertaining,” Ben said reluctantly after they’d packed up what was left of Carli’s monstrous pile of stuff to donate to charity. They’d loaded the boxes of leftovers into the back of her SUV, and now the two of them were standing in the road staring back at their respective houses. Addie had left for a sleepover at a friend’s house, Ethan was off playing basketball with a kid who lived down the street, and Carli’s kids had passed on her offer of sushi to go to the movies with friends instead.
“We’ll make a Monroe Circle–ite out of you yet,” Carli answered. “I agree it’s all a little much, but honestly, when my kids were little, this stuff was the best. So many great memories. That’s probably why I wanted to keep this house instead of selling it, although the repair bills are killing me.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked, suddenly feeling his stomach rumble and realizing it was dinnertime. And who was he kidding? He didn’t want to eat alone again, and Carli was excellent company. It had nothing to do with how enticing she managed to make that sweatshirt and jeans look.
Her face flushed. “I’ve got plenty of money for food. I didn’t mean that.”
It took him a second to understand, then he burst out laughing at her response. “Oh my gosh, that’s not why I asked if you were hungry. I asked because I’m starving. Do you want to go grab something to eat?”
Her cheeks went a shade darker, and she brushed away a strand of dark hair that the wind kept blowing around her head. “Um, sure. Where are you thinking?”
“I don’t care. Is that Woodfire Grill any good? I keep driving past it and it always looks busy, so I’m guessing it has decent food.”
“It does. We can go there if you want to.”
“Okay, unless you had other plans. I don’t want to keep you.” He did want to keep her, actually. The more he thought about dinner with her, the more the idea appealed to him, and it wasn’t just because he was hungry.
“Sadly, putting up Halloween decorations for the enjoyment of other people’s kids was the only thing on my schedule today, so dinner sounds good. Let me run inside and change. Meet you out front in fifteen minutes?”
“Sounds good.”
Apparently, Carli could do a lot with fifteen minutes, and when she emerged from her house, Ben’s breath caught in his throat. She’d changed into tight jeans and those short little boots that women seemed to be wearing these days. The kind with tall, pencil-thin heels. Her sweater was black, and she wore a brightly patterned scarf around her neck. She’d even put on a bit of makeup, although not nearly as much as she wore on the days that he saw her after work. She had the whole cute-but-sexy thing going, and he realized that the twist in his gut he got every time he saw her was becoming a constant companion.
Today had been fun, not because he cared about Halloween decorations, but because hanging out with her made him laugh. It made him forget about all the crap going on in other areas of his life. It made him forget about Sophia. Carli made him forget about Sophia. A fact that he was determined not to overanalyze.
The restaurant was crowded, so they ordered a drink at the bar. Carli sat on a stool, and Ben stood next to her. Probably closer than he needed to. It was easy to press close and blame it on the crowd, and it gave him a chance to breathe in her perfume, a subtle but appealing scent of flowers and spice.
“Did you know you have a branch nearly touching you?” he found himself asking, which was not at all what he wanted to talk about, but her thigh had just accidentally brushed against his and the jolt went straight to his groin. Served him right for standing so close. “I mean, a branch nearly touching your roof.”
Carli nodded and took a sip of her lemon drop martini. “Yes, that stupid branch has been like that for a while now. Every single time the wind blows, I’m convinced it’s going to crash through my ceiling and pin me to the bed.” She blushed immediately at her awkward word choice, prompting Ben to have a vision of himself doing just that—pinning her to the bed. He lost himself for a second, then cleared his throat.
“I’ve got an arborist coming to look at a couple of my trees. I can have them take a look at that one if you’d like.” Jesus, Ben. Way to smooth talk a lady. A lady who’d just mentioned being pinned to the bed! What a lost opportunity. If not for her crimson cheeks, he might have thought she was flirting.
Was she flirting? Damn it, he’d been married for too frickin’ long. He had zero game. Not that he needed game with Carli. They were just neighbors having a neighborly dinner at the local neighborhood watering hole, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t engage in a little harmless flirting. If he could just remember how.
“I should probably do something about that,” she said, obviously referring to the branch. “So, yeah, if you don’t mind asking your tree guys to check out my trees, too, that would be great.”
He nodded, allowing a moment of awkwardness to pass before adding, “Um, how about some details on this hayride thing?”
They moved from the bar to their table when the hostess said it was ready and continued chatting—about house painters, and landscapers, and their kids and school. She told him about her new job and how the dog training was progressing. He talked about his family and the stuff he was doing to his house. All topics mundane enough to distract him from noticing the rich color of her eyes, the lush fullness of her lips, or the way a tendril of her hair kept brushing against her cheek. Except that those topics didn’t distract him. The only thing distracting him tonight was her.
And that was super inconvenient.
They ordered another drink as they waited for their meals to arrive, and Carli had only taken a few sips before saying, “Okay, so, I don’t want you to think I’m spying on you or anything, but I couldn’t help but notice you seemed to have had a date the other night.”
Her words and coy delivery caught him off guard, not because she’d offended him, but because he’d so thoroughly and entirely blocked that event from his mind. And for some reason, he didn’t want her to think it was a date, exactly. Because while it had started as a date, it most definitely had not ended like one.
The New Normal Page 17